Month: March 2012

Often times the staffing world butts heads with corporate human resources. Often depicting them (HR) as the mighty gate keepers preventing the firm from working with a hiring manager and ultimately making money.

Before fleshing this out, it’s important to understand the roles and motivations of those involved when dealing with a job vacancy.

The Firm

No, not the Grisham novel, the IT staffing firm. The sole purpose of the firm is to place a candidate at a company and charge the company an hourly rate while paying the candidate for doing the job. The account executive wants to deal with the people that make the final hiring decision and are holding the money.

Human Resources

HR will be typically be responsible for posting the job, gathering the applicants, phone screening the applicants, partaking in the face-to-face interview, construct an offer, extend an offer and on board the hire. Some will say this is a key responsibility of the HR rep and ultimately save the company the expense of hiring a firm. The HR rep will feel it’s their job. If a firm does this, then what’s the value of the HR rep. When I refer to HR rep it’s typically not a corporate recruiter, necessarily, but can be.

The Hiring Manager

The hiring manager is the ultimate decision maker and needs a person for the vacancy in a timely manner. While they collaborate with the HR rep, they know what they’re looking for – experience, skills, industry lingo, and have more weight in the hire or not hire decision. They also have the budget ok to make the hire, hence they hold the purse.

You can make the above relationships work, but there has to be mutual respect among all parties.

I worked for small firm here in the Madison area. Yeah imagine the reactions some clients had when I left a web account manager for a corporate IT recruiter position. I digress. I learned a lot about project management, selling e-marketing solutions, and understanding client needs. I also learned a bit more about web analytics.

I used to think I knew what web analytics was all about. I had it on a few websites of my own and took a look at them from time to time. Well I did not have a good understanding, and I still don’t. Not fully. Why? Because it’s a tricky space. Many rookies and professionals tend to think they know what the numbers mean, but they misinterpret them or think that more is better. That’s not always the case. I give you the following example…Continue reading Web Analytics – What Do They Mean?

Just a quick list of things to consider should you want to explore the possibility of doing a quality podcast. I have done limited podcasting in the past and am far from an expert. However, I have some interest in juicing up the mics for a new recruiting podcast, but I don’t want to go in half-ass. Here are just some details, as part of a master outline. I’ll take the following and nail down even finer details. I thought this could also help other exploring the idea. Sure, you can get a web host, fire up a built in mic, hit record, upload and call it a day, but this post is for someone to consider other details. I hope you find it helpful and get you thinking.

Name of podcast

Hosting

Length of episode – set, flexible

Release frequency of episodes – weekly, biweekly

Day(s) of the week to release

Day(s) of the week to record

Format – segments, etc

Music – intro/outro

Creative commons

Disclosures for guests – royalties, rights, understand all audio can be used, etc

We are seeking an uncommon professional to join our team as a IT Manager-Application Development. This position is open due to an internal transfer that ocurred months ago as well as continued growth within the supported areas. A qualified candidate would have 3-5 years of experience managing a team within the app dev space. This individual will be managing a team of 5-7 application developers that support our Field Sales and B2B Marketing areas. Managing of budgets on a per-project basis ranging from 100k to $1M will be required by this person. Since this is application development, knowledge of SDLC, to include Waterfall & Agile, methodologies are preferred. The department is very project driven so project management experience would be a plus. Due to evolving changes within the area, contact & call center workflow experience would also be nice to have.

You’re going to use a staffing firm to help you with your job search. What do you need to know? How should you prepare?

Staffing firms can be great resources for those that need help with a job search. They know a ton of people in the industry and work with some reputable companies in your region as well as across the nation. They know companies that are awesome that you will never know about by just living in an area. It’s part of their job.

A good recruiter will tell you what to bring in with you and it’s typically the following: